In truth, most of his high-profile films were either mediocre or downright bad. Does anyone but hard-core fans really want to revisit such 1940s MGM musicals as "Anchors Aweigh" or "Till the Clouds Roll By"? Excepting "Ocean's 11," the late-'50s Rat Pack comedies - "Sergeants 3," "Four for Texas" and "Robin and the 7 Hoods" - are among the most forgettable films of the decade by a major artist. And the rest of the '60s were even worse: "Assault on a Queen," "Tony Rome" and nearly a dozen other carelessly chosen, shoddily made throwaways.

The exception during these years were the sophisticated "lounge musicals" of the 1950s - "Young at Heart," "High Society" and "Pal Joey," featuring Sinatra in roles far more suited to him. How could a man who devoted such care and imparted such craft to his records be so sloppy in his film career? It's a mystery almost as large as how a man involved in so many bad projects could give so many superb performances.

Because there was another Frank Sinatra in that period, a Sinatra the public seldom saw who constantly took odd-ball parts in off-beat movies that had little hope of commercial success and that worked against the image his more high-profile films seemed intended to build up.

It's ironic that the career of this noir-Sinatra was kicked off by his famous role in his best film: Private Maggio (for which he won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar) in "From Here to Eternity." Sinatra's brand of amiable, low-life, ethnic naturalism was new to the American screen, at least in parts so highly visible. He seemed not to be playing one of the people - he seemed to be one of the people.

After "From Here to Eternity," Sinatra took at least one adventurous film role a year for the rest of the decade: an amiably psychotic assassin in "Suddenly" (1954); a bullying coward in "Johnny Concho" (1955); a drug addict in "The Man With the Golden Arm" (1956); a down-and-out nightclub comic in 'The Joker Is Wild' (1957), and an alienated veteran in "Some Came Running."

Most of these films weren't hits. Neither was his best film after "From Here To Eternity" - John Frankenheimer's dazzling "The Manchurian Candidate." But in all of them, Sinatra displayed a wonderfully affectless American acting technique, a natural, almost modest quality that wasn't afraid to reveal weakness or doubt or despair, a quality very close to the finest of his performances on record.

Probably the most memorable of these - in fact, Sinatra's best lead movie role - was in Otto Preminger's "The Man With the Golden Arm." As the druggie and ace poker dealer Frankie, Sinatra was, in the words of one critic, "rhythmic, tense and instinctive, yet controlled, and of course, he has a performer's presence."

The same could have been written of Sinatra the singer.

Allen Barra lives in South Orange and writes regularly about film and sports.